Andrew Coates welcomes the victory of the left alliance in recent French elections but sees President Macron continue to manoeuvre
After snap legislative elections in July France remains without a Prime Minister elected by the National Assembly. After the national populist National Rally, (RN) headed the poll in the June French European elections (with 30 seats) it’s said President Macron gambled on rallying anti-RN electors around his bloc, Ensemble, and marginalising a divided left.
Despite some initial pessimism the left became the largest group in the National Assembly with 180 deputies, Macron’s Ensemble bloc, 157, and the far right bloc headed by Jordan Bardella, and Marine Le Pen’s RN, at 125.
In the contest the left overcame divisions in its previous alliance, NUPES (New Ecological and Social Popular Union) to form a wider body, the New Popular Front. The Front, whose name echoes the 1930s Popular Front, is very broad. It includes moderate social democrats, including those who backed François Hollande (Socialist Party President of France from 2012 to 2017), allies of this Parti Socialiste, such as Raphaël Glucksmann (son of the philosopher André Glucksmann) of the centre left pro-European Place publique, the Green Party (now known as Les Écologistes,), Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France insoumise, who make up its largest component, the French Communist Party, and a small galaxy of other groups, including the Fourth International aligned Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste.
The election was marked by large popular protests against the far right. In mid-June, on one day alone, 250,000 demonstrated. The breadth of this support put a damper on Macron and centrist efforts to claim that LFI was as bad as the RN. The two round French electoral system allowed many moderate figures to stand aside for the NFP in order to block the way to the party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella. Known as the “Republican Front” this reaction echoed feelings in the 1930s against the possibility of the extreme right coming to power.
There has, nevertheless, been no parallel to the labour and social unrest of the 1930s, let alone factory occupations. Inside the institutions the left lacks the 289-seat absolute majority needed to impose its policies and leadership.
It is said that Macron and his advisers are still banking on the left’s divisions. To buy time, up to and during the Olympic “truce” they refused to accept potential NFA’s nominations for Prime Minister. The latest figure proposed to head a government, the impeccably measured Lucie Castets, was rejected out of hand by the President. It’s said that their ambition is to reach agreement with more centrist forces around the Socialists.
That there are differences on the left cannot be denied. Some call for an alliance with the left middle class, “la bourgeoisie de gauche”. Others continue to disagree strongly with what was known a few years ago as the “bloc bourgeois” strategy, pointing to the need to reconnect with the “peripheral”, often one time industrial, areas of France which have turned to the sovereigntist right. On a more factional level La France insoumise has had a small split, L’Après, which involves the well regarded internationalist leftist Clémentine Autain. Many say that the leadership of Mélenchon, the non democratic nature of his national “party”, and his efforts to influence what goes on in the Parliamentary group (he did not stand as an MP this time) have created long-standing frictions. Disagreements between him and the rest of the left over issues such as Ukraine and Venezuela (Mélenchon remains a partisan of the “Bolivarian revolution”) remain.
The latest Macron candidate for PM appears to be former PM under Hollande, Bernard Cazeneuve. He is unlikely to appeal to many on the left. Predicting what will happen is rather like weather forecasts, they change from day to day. But the NPA, election results alone, is an example of what an alliance between the radical left and the centre left can achieve in its hour of need.